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The newest CEO for Covisint, Bob Paul, has taken charge of the supplier exchange, making him the third CEO the company has had in about a year. Paul, 40, replaced Bruce Swift last Thursday; Swift had been in charge of the company for less than two months before leaving for a position at supplier Metaldyne Corp.; he will remain on Covisint’s board. Paul has been at Covisint since October of 2001. Before Swift, former GM exec Harold Kutner ran Covisint, preceded by Kevin English, the company’s first CEO.

This week TCC features the third in our overviews of Ford history. The fourth generation of the Ford family to enter the business was potentially quite numerous: three children of Henry II, two of Benson, four of Josephine (Mrs. Walter Ford), and four of William Clay Ford. Out of these, only two have counted: Edsel Ford II, Young Henry’s only son, born 1948, who became a company employee in 1974 after graduating from Babson College; and William Clay Ford Jr., born in 1957, who joined in 1979 upon graduation from Princeton. Both young Fords went through a series of management development positions of increasing responsibilities — and gave a good account of themselves among other Ford employees not so well anointed. Meanwhile, Henry Ford II was winding down his active management of Ford Motor Company and, with the young family members way too inexperienced to take the reins of a now-public company, supported company veterans Phil Caldwell, Don Petersen, and Red Polling to run things.

As Ford prepares to celebrate its one hundredth year in business on June 16th, TCC has a special feature from another veteran Detroit writer to tell the story of one of the world’s greatest car companies. Maynard M. (Mac) Gordon will be writing a series of recollections for TheCarConnection, spanning his own 60-year career as an automotive journalist, which has provided the opportunity for many personal glimpses into Ford’s evolution over the years. “My first big assignment as a fledgling reporter and copyreader for Automotive News sent me watching as Henry Ford II, then 28 years old, drove the first 1945 Ford car off the restarted Rouge plant assembly line in Dearborn. Edsel Ford’s oldest son, Henry II, had been recalled from the U.S. Navy to save the nearly bankrupt company from the machinations of his aging grandfather’s crony, the infamous Harry Bennett. Ford insiders — and knowledgeable media types like Associated Press auto editor David Wilkie — were far from optimistic that ‘young Henry’ could pull the rescue mission off,” Gordon recalls in the first installment of his 60 years behind the scenes at Ford:

VW de México has announced that this is the last model year for its iconic VW Beetle, marking the end of a nearly 70-year run of the world’s best-selling vehicle. Although the exact end date for the model hasn’t been announced, it is expected to happen at the end of the summer. This marks the end of an almost 70-year era and thus the New Beetle becomes the only Beetle worldwide. In Mexico the original Beetle sold alongside with the New Beetle as the VW Sedan.